


A Place For Us

by pennyslug



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Bellamy looking for Clarke, Bellamy running Camp Jaha alone, Bellamy seeing Clarke again, Camp Jaha, Canon Compliant, Clarke in the woods, Clarke-centric, F/M, Fearless Clarke, Gen, Injured Clarke, POV Bellamy Blake, POV Clarke, Post Season 2 Finale, Princess Clarke, Protective Bellamy, Protective Clarke, Slow Burn Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Warrior Princess Clarke, Worried Bellamy, clarke surviving, grounders, injured bellamy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-03-22 16:19:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3735490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennyslug/pseuds/pennyslug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three months have passed since Clarke left Bellamy and the rest of Camp Jaha, and winter has arrived on the ground. Luckily, Clarke finds comfort and help from an unexpected source. Bellamy has gotten by as best he can in the meantime, but once the two of them meet again for the first time in three months, their relationship reaches a point of no return and draws them together like an unstoppable force.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Treehouse

**Author's Note:**

> I've kept this fic as canon-compliant as possible with one major exception: I created a new character. I hope that this will not detract from the story for too many people. I've put a lot of care into making sure her personal story fits in with the rest of the overall story, and her role in the fic definitely serves a purpose. I hope you all will like her! Feedback on this character is greatly appreciated.
> 
> Another note about this fic: the chapters are long, and the romance is slow-burn compared to most Bellarke fics (that I've read at least). I promise there will be both smut and fluff, but it won't be immediate (as in, it won't be until later chapters). It is definitely not a quick read, instant gratification, one-shot type of thing. This is because I want to make the fic as realistic within the universe of the show as possible. We won't see Bellarke happen immediately on episode 1 of season 3, so it doesn't happen immediately in this fic either. However, I do write this fic with the assumption that Clarke and Bellamy already have romantic feelings for each other (though they are in various stages of realization), because I believe that to be true in the show.
> 
> I've also put together a playlist of songs that inspired me as I wrote this fic. Each chapter will have a different playlist, which I will put in the notes before each chapter. Ones with a "#1" or "#2" in front of them are ones that directly inspired me as I wrote, while the others are ones that I feel match the chapter's mood and the mindset of the characters.  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 1 Playlist:  
> #1: Elastic Heart, by Sia (this song inspires most of the chapters in this fic, not just chapter 1)  
> Extreme Ways, by Moby  
> Atlas, by Coldplay  
> Tomorrow Will Be Kinder, by The Secret Sisters

Clarke woke slowly to the sound of two animals fighting somewhere nearby. Almost immediately she felt confused—animals inside the camp? Was the electric fence down? And what were the guards doing? _Bellamy will be lecturing them about it in a few hours_ , she thought with an amused, sleepy smirk. And just like that, the reality flooded in. Bellamy’s name brought back the memories of their goodbye, and the reasons it had to happen. Clarke realized she’d been dreaming that she was back at Camp Jaha, and the whole thing had seemed too painfully real. Instead she was in the treehouse, her fur bedroll keeping her warm in the still-cold air despite the late morning sun that streamed in through the window.  


Swallowing down the lump of guilt and sadness that began rising in her throat, she sat up and slowly looked around her at the place that had become her home over the past three months. It actually wasn't a terrible place to wake up to; and Clarke would know, having spent the first few weeks of her exile sleeping restlessly on piles of leaves and moss in the increasingly frosty air. There were relics of the old Earth littering the walls—photographs of random people, rusted license plates, various tools hanging on pegs, and a few paintings that Clarke had spent hours admiring when she first saw them. She liked waking up to the faces in the photographs. It almost made her feel like they were her family members, and this her childhood home.  


The treehouse had three rooms, and Clarke was sleeping in the smaller of the two on the main level. The other bedroll in the room, positioned adjacently to hers, was empty. The weathered knapsack that usually sat beside it was gone, signifying to Clarke that Osprey had gone out somewhere. She glanced out the window at the position of the sun, and from what she could tell through the trees she had slept much too late. She got up quickly and crossed the room to the wash basin, which was really just a large metal bin filled with clear water from the nearby spring. Osprey—the “owner” of the treehouse—had managed to find a large fragment of a mirror somewhere and set it above the basin. When she first looked into it a few months ago, it had been the first time Clarke had seen her reflection clearly since landing on Earth. She hadn't recognized herself. Now, however, she was used to seeing the blank eyes and stony expression staring back at her, and paid no attention before splashing the cold water on her face.  


After drying off, Clarke pulled back the fur flap covering the doorway and walked into the front room. The bedroom was cozy, but Clarke always preferred spending time in this room. The front door of the treehouse was closed and the wooden bar that the two women used as a lock was solidly in place. Clarke smiled to herself when she noticed. She could always trust Osprey to be cautious about things like that. It helped her sleep at night after everything that had happened. Especially once the nightmares started and any number of enemies would be able to hear her yelling in her sleep. Clarke knew she was being paranoid, but she couldn't stop expecting the acid fog to roll through or a sniper like the one that had picked the few surviving Grounders off after the missile in Ton DC to shoot the windows out. Even after three months the threat of the Mountain Men haunted her, like something lurking at the edges of her vision. She knew they were dead—she killed them all—but the silent, subversive control they had over the lives of everyone outside of Mount Weather (and within Mount Weather for that matter) left a mark.  


Despite the solidly locked front door and the notable stack of various weapons beside it, the room typically had a very open feel, which is what Clarke liked about it, though that feel was reduced somewhat by the furs hung along the walls to insulate the treehouse from the winter cold. It had two windows on either side of the room, and a side door leading out to the wrap-around deck and the small outdoor staircase that led up to the third room on top of the treehouse. There was a makeshift table in the center of the room, upon which sat a bowl of nuts collected before the frost had set in, and four built-in, wardrobe-sized pantries along the walls that were stuffed with food reserves, furs, and tools. In one of the pantries Clarke had begun to stockpile bottles of alcohol, cloth, and the few medicinal herbs she could recognize in case of emergencies. There was also a metal stove on the side wall with a small chimney pipe running up to the roof so that the smoke from the stove fire could escape without clouding up the room. Osprey hadn't built the treehouse—it was far too well made with walls made out of mill-cut wood, a shingled roof, and actual glass windows to have been built after the nuclear winter—but she’d found it almost completely hidden in the trees and made it her home. She’d made some minor repairs and added some features to make it more defensible, but that was the extent of her touch. Clarke liked how it was mostly in its original form. There weren’t very many old Earth buildings left intact, and certainly not houses. It was a rare glimpse into what people lived like before, and Clarke often caught herself imagining the people that once inhabited it. Even more often she caught herself imagining that she was one of them, and that she had never been born on the Arc or been betrayed by Grounders or murdered a mountain full of people. Sometimes she imagined that Bellamy and Octavia and Raven and Finn and Wells and her father were there too, all of them living happily in a world that hadn’t yet fallen apart. But those daydreams were too painful to keep up for long.  


Clarke rubbed her hands up and down her arms as she sat at the table and ate the nuts. The weather had started to turn cold only a few weeks after she’d left Camp Jaha behind, and by a month and a half the chill became permanent. Frost covered the ground in the mornings, and the first time Clarke saw her breath in the air she couldn’t help but marvel at the sight. Osprey had laughed at her the first time she saw ice sickles and the frozen surface of the nearby creek. There still hadn’t been any snow yet, but Osprey promised her it wouldn't be long. She’d also promised her that by the end of the winter she’d be so sick of it that she wouldn't be sorry to never see it again.  


Just as Clarke smiled at the memory of her new companion’s words, she heard a thump on the deck outside the front door. Then the string attached to the bar lock on the door stretched taught and the bar lifted from its place, allowing the door to swing open.  


“Hey, you’re awake,” said Osprey, entering the room and shutting the door quickly behind her to keep the cold air out. She pulled back the fur-lined hood she wore over her head and tugged off her leather boots. She was tall and slender, with long auburn hair and startling pale green eyes. She wore her hair much like a Grounder, with a sort of mohwak made of braids running the top of her head and down her back. The sides were also braided into the mohwak, unlike the way Octavia usually wore hers. She was no Grounder though; she was _Skaikru_ , like Clarke and the rest of the survivors from the Ark. Ironically, she was also a delinquent like the 100. But she came to the ground five years before any of the rest of them, and completely on her own. Everyone on the Ark knew who she was, but none of them thought she was still alive. Clarke had been completely dumbfounded when she realized just who had found her freezing and starving in the woods.  


Osprey was a legend on the Ark, the kind of person kids made up crazy stories about during recess. She had been in Bellamy’s year, and was also once a member of the guard like him. Also like Bellamy, she had had a secret: she was a twin. On the Ark, the birth of twins was always a touchy matter, since population had to be kept strictly in line. But unlike second children like Octavia, twins were not necessarily killed at birth. If there was a childless married couple available, the second twin was given to them, and the couple would be given implants to prevent them from having any more children like everyone else after they’d reached the one-child limit. In Osprey’s case, she was the younger twin after her brother, Heron. The twins were not to be told about each other, and raised completely separately so that no one on the Ark would recognize them as siblings, in order to reinforce the one-child rules. Heron stayed with their birth parents, who were a part of the privileged, and Osprey was given to the only childless married couple on the Ark at the time— _“Who were conveniently poor as shit,”_ Osprey had said with a smirk when she first recounted this tale to Clarke. _“That’s how me and Bellamy knew each other, before the guard. We lived on the same housing block. “_  


Despite being separated though, the twins quickly gravitated towards each other. _“We knew something was up. We had the same hair, same eyes. And we felt things. We had dreams about each other. And somehow I always knew when he was upset. He told me about our parents and grandparents so I’d know what they were like. How they named us after birds from Earth. Stuff like that._  


_We kept the secret though. We were smart enough to know that some adults didn’t like it when we played together too much. When we got older, Heron started knicking me supplies since my adoptive family didn’t have much. Even as a member of the guard, I didn’t have access to some things that he did. One day I got caught with some stuff I wasn’t supposed to have, and well—you know the rest.”_  


Clarke did know the rest—it’s what made her legend. A guard—an upholder of Ark law—had been caught with stolen supplies. The council revealed to the public that she was a twin in the trial, since some—notably Marcus Kane—thought her brother might be getting them for her. Osprey denied that he had any involvement ( _“the idiot tried to turn himself in, but thankfully our parents kept him quiet”_ ), and was sentenced to death by floating. She managed to escape from her cell the night before her execution, however, and stole one of the Ark’s escape pods. Clarke remembered virtually everyone on the Ark watching at the windows as her pod shot down towards the planet. She distinctly remembered watching the faintly glowing light of the pod entering Earth’s atmosphere as long as she could, until it had completely disappeared. Many on the Ark, especially the scientists like Clarke’s father, seriously wondered whether or not Osprey had survived the landing, and attempted to make contact with her in the days after. But no one ever heard a word from her again, leaving them all to assume her dead, either from exploding in the atmosphere or dying from radiation on the ground. _“I figured I was going to die anyway, so I decided I’d rather die in a fiery explosion trying to reach the ground than turning into a human popsicle floating off into space. At least I had a slim chance of making it on the ground. And here I am, five years later, smoking meat with Clarke Griffin while the people who sentenced me to death are fumbling around in the woods a few miles away.”_  


_“But how did you survive on your own out here for five years?”_  


_“The Trigedakru. Grounders, as you call them. They saw my pod land and took me captive. They had no idea there were people living up in the sky. I was the one who taught them to speak our language. They knew bits and pieces of it, but there were a lot of gaps. My guard training meant that I knew a few things about fighting, so they deemed me worthy and trained me as a warrior. But the Mountain Men had seen my pod land, too. They started raiding Trigedakru villages looking for me. Threatened to bomb them if they didn’t hand me over. I thought the Trigedakru thought of me like family, and would never hand me over. But I was wrong about them. The Mountain Men had them on leashes, nice and tight. So they betrayed me.”_  


_“But why didn’t you want to go with the Mountain Men? Once you saw that they had technology, didn’t you think you’d be better off with them?”_  


_“I didn’t trust them. Raiding villages, killing innocent people, threatening them with bombs. They didn’t seem like the kind of people I wanted to be around. You of all people should understand the unsettling feeling I had about them, Clarke. The Trigedakru were…difficult, but at least they had honor. At least I knew how they thought. So when they handed me over, I escaped. One of the Mountain Men shot me in the scuffle, and I guess they assumed I was dead. They looked for me for a while but gave up. The Trigedakru wouldn’t accept me back, but promised not to tell the Mountain Men I was still alive. After their betrayal, I didn’t trust them, so I’ve kept the location of my home secret from the Trigedakru ever since. But I’ve still traded with them over the years. Nothing like a common enemy to make friends, huh Clarke? I feel like I should apologize though.”_  


_“What for?”_  


_“It’s because of me that the Trigedakru attacked you and the other kids when you landed on Earth. They were afraid the Mountain Men would start raiding their villages again and dropping bombs, so they just attacked you on sight. They’d learned their lesson about being friends with Sky People.”_  


_“How do you know all this?”_  


_“I…watched you all. I had no idea who was going to come out of that dropship when it landed. A scientific team maybe, or Jaha himself even. I never expected it to be Bellamy Blake and his ragtag team of delinquents. I thought about making contact with you, helping you figure things out. But things were real crazy in your little camp those first few weeks, and I decided I could help you all better in a more subtle way.”_  


_“What do you mean? How did you help us?”_  


_“I’m the one that put that seaweed in Jasper’s wounds. The Grounders left him for dead on that tree. Sometimes I left some kills for your woefully inadequate hunters to find. Things like that.”_  


_“Wow. I had no idea.”_  


_“That was kind of the point.”_  


_“I think we could have really used your help in a direct way, but still…thank you. And you’ve been watching us ever since? At Camp Jaha? And in Mt. Weather?”_  


_“Camp Jaha, yes. Mt. Weather, no. I’ve never been in the mountain, so I had no idea what was going on in there until you escaped and told everyone. I would have made myself known to you and warned you about it if I knew. I figured the Mountain Men were going to come for you all eventually the way they came after me, but I had no way of stopping that. I didn’t know what they wanted you for, and while I got pretty good at keeping myself under their radar, I had no way of hiding that many of you. And I didn’t come forward after you escaped because I knew nothing about the mountain or how to help you get your people back. There was nothing I could tell you or offer you that the Grounders didn’t already know or have. I had no idea how that war of yours was going to turn out, so I kept myself hidden in case the Mountain Men won. I suppose I could have warned you that the Trigedakru would betray you, though I don’t think you would have believed me. I was there, watching, the night Lexa left you standing alone at that mountain. I was also watching when you led your people home, but turned your back and walked away. At that moment, I decided I wouldn’t let you die out here on your own. To make it up to you for not stepping forward sooner, I decided I would keep watch over you and your people back at the camp. So that’s what I’m going to do. You have my word.”_  


And she had kept her word. Clarke thought about that conversation often, how there had been a silent guardian angel watching over them in those first few weeks. Sometimes she felt a little angry that Osprey had kept her distance for so long and watched them go through all of the things they suffered, but looking back Clarke felt sure that Osprey was right in believing that she wouldn’t have really been able to change anything. She wouldn’t have been able to stop the Mountain Men from taking Clarke’s friends and drilling holes in them. She wouldn’t have been able to stop Lexa from betraying her. But she was here now, helping Clarke survive. And wasn’t Clarke doing the same thing Osprey had done all that time? Keeping her distance, living under the radar? In the three months that passed since that conversation, Clarke came to understand the appeal of staying hidden.  


Besides, Clarke told herself, they were keeping watch of everyone back at camp. They weren’t just abandoning her people. Osprey was the best scout Clarke had ever seen, even better than a Grounder. She kept a watchful eye on Camp Jaha from the trees and gave Clarke regular reports so that she wouldn’t have to get close and risk being seen herself…or see any of their faces. Clarke assumed that that’s what she’d been doing that very morning. And sure enough, as if she could read Clarke’s mind, Osprey began giving her report.  


“Business as usual there today. Lincoln’s still teaching people how to skin animals. They’ve got quite a stack of furs going now. But I can tell the cold is getting to them. Not as many people outside much anymore. And they finished making the first batch of animal fat oil,” she said as she removed a few layers of garments, set down her knapsack, and pulled out some slices of deer jerky from one of the pantries.  


“Sorry I slept so late today. I could’ve been gathering firewood all morning,” Clarke said as Osprey sat down at the table across from her. Osprey shrugged and tore off a bite of jerky. Clarke sighed quietly as she stared at the strip of tough, stringy dried meat in her friend’s hand. She wasn’t looking forward to subsisting on the stuff all winter. Osprey caught her look and smirked.  


“You can always go back to Camp Jaha and live luxuriously off of canned vegetables.”  


“No thanks. Besides, those canned vegetables are only going to be around for this winter, maybe next if they scrimp and save. Eventually they’re going to spend their winters almost entirely on jerky too.”  


“I guess that brings me to the other bit of news I have to report.”  


Clarke looked up at her, a quizzical expression on her face.  


“They’re planning an expedition of sorts into Mt. Weather to look for more canned food and supplies,” Osprey said, keeping her eyes locked on Clarke’s.  


“I thought you said they had more than enough canned food already stocked up for this winter? Though I guess they want to keep the Grounders from getting them first. There’s got to be all kinds of stuff in there…medical supplies, clothes, bullets…”  


… _and dead bodies_ , Clarke added in her head, looking away from Osprey’s gaze. _That I killed_.  


“There’s that, yes. But they have another reason. Some of the women are pregnant.”  


Clarke’s head snapped up at this, a look of confusion on her face. Every woman on the Ark had an implant in her body that administered regular doses of birth control. They had to be renewed every year though, so of course some of the women from the Ark could have already run out by now. Clarke’s heart skipped a beat for a moment as she realized that hers could have run out too. All of the implants in the girls among the 100 were renewed just before they were sent to Earth, however, causing a wave of relief to wash over Clarke when she remembered. Not that she was having a lot of sex with men (or anyone for that matter), but the thought of getting pregnant on the ground scared the shit out of her.  


“Who? And how many?” she asked, her brows knitting together with concern.  


“Three, and they all appear to be in their late 20’s or early 30’s. I don’t recognize any of them from the Ark, so I couldn’t tell you their names. Your mother’s been keeping them inside the ship for the most part. But she wants a group to go into the mountain and look for more food and anything that can help with pregnancy and birth. She’s probably hoping they’ll find powdered baby formula.”  


Osprey chuckled to herself and added, “Maybe they’ll come out with strollers and pacifiers too. Anyway, they need to stock up because there’s going to be more pregnancies popping up over the next few months.”  


“What makes you say that?”  


“Clarke, your people won a war. Remember the Baby Boom of the 20th century? Everyone’s happy to be alive and feeling reckless. Also, winter is a pretty popular time for conceiving children among the Trigedakru, and I don’t see why it’ll be any different for your people. Everyone cooped up in there for months…”  


Clarke nodded in understanding. She found herself feeling exceedingly glad that none of the girls in the 100 could have gotten pregnant in those first few weeks…there had been a lot of sex going on. Especially in Bellamy’s tent. Suddenly Clarke had an image in her head of Bellamy being the father of one of those three children. The women were all in their 20’s or 30’s, Osprey had said, and Bellamy was older than the rest of the 100. He could very easily have… _no_ , Clarke thought firmly. Her stomach clenched tightly at the mental image like a snake constricting its prey. For some reason Clarke couldn’t put her finger on, the thought of Bellamy fathering one of those children really bothered her. Not that he’d be a bad father, Clarke thought. In fact, he’d be very good. Back in those first few wild weeks she wouldn’t have thought so, but now…  


_I just don’t want him to be one of the fathers because the camp really needs him to focus on other things, especially since I’m not there to help him,_ Clarke told herself. _And he already worries so much about Octavia_.  


“Well, fortunately, my mother has delivered babies before. And I’m sure there are plants that can help. Won’t Lincoln know about some of them?”  


“There are most certainly plants that can help, but I really don’t think Lincoln will know anything about them. The only Trigedakru that do are the healers and the parents that have taken them before.”  


“Do _you_ know about them?”  
Osprey looked at Clarke for a long moment.  


“Yes.”  


Clarke nodded at her response. She knew Osprey wouldn’t want to make herself known to the camp. And leaving a pile of the herbs somewhere they could find wouldn’t work either, since none of them would know what they were for and would probably end up getting suspicious. Clarke knew she could take them, but she wasn’t ready to face all the questions that would inevitably come from her waltzing into camp one day and dropping a pile of herbs into her mother’s speechless hands.  


“Well, I’m sure they’ll be able to find plenty of whatever they need in Mt. Weather. Did you hear who’s leading the expedition?”  


Osprey looked at her strangely for a moment. She then cleared the expression from her face and replied with “Guess.”  


“Bellamy.”  


“Bingo,” she said, pointing her half-eaten stick of jerky at Clarke before ripping off another bite.  


Bellamy. Of course Bellamy. Perhaps he was one of the fathers…the snake constricted again in Clarke’s stomach. No, he’s just being Bellamy.  


“Also that guy Miller, a couple of guards, Monty, and one of your mom’s medical assistants.”  


“Monty? Why Monty?”  


“Isn’t he supposed to be really good at computers and stuff? They’re probably bringing him in case there’s some salvageable tech still in there.”  


Clarke’s brow knitted in worry.  


“Didn’t you say that there were still Reapers crawling around outside Mt. Weather last time you scouted there?”  


Osprey nodded as she swallowed the last of her jerky.  


“Many of them have died from the withdrawal from that awful drug you told me about, so it won’t be as dangerous now as it was a few months ago when they were frantically tearing the place apart looking for doses. But there must be some stores of it left, because there’s a small group of them that’s still holed up in there. Even though there’s less Reapers now, however, there are more Trigedakru.”  


“They’re going after the Mountain Men’s supplies, just like we are,” Clarke said gravely.  


“Yep. And they’re more desperate than your people. That alliance of yours showed them that your people have a lot of guns and supplies, and you understand the mountain’s technology. They’re afraid of you becoming the next Mountain Men.”  


Clarke’s brow furrowed. Osprey was right. Lexa wouldn’t leave anything to chance. She’d do just about anything to stop a single Sky Person from stepping foot in that mountain.  


“Do the people back at camp realize this? Have they been sending scouts to the mountain?”  


“They’ve been keeping an eye on it, yeah. They don’t want the Trigedakru getting a hold of any of that stuff either. Lincoln and Octavia have advised them as best they can about what the Trigedakru will do. I think they realize the Trigedakru will try to stop them from getting in the mountain. Don’t worry, Clarke,” Osprey added after seeing the worried expression on Clarke’s face. “They won’t go in there without a plan. And they’ll have us.”  


“What?”  


“I think we should follow their little expedition to the base of the mountain. Just in case they get outnumbered by Trigedakru. And to make sure the Trigedakru can’t ambush them when they come out.”  


Clarke looked at her friend with a small smile.  


“Good idea. When is the expedition leaving?”  


“In about a week. I’ll have to keep watching them to know exactly when. But that gives us time for you to practice your aim. C’mon,” she said, getting up from her stool at the table and walking over to the weapon rack by the door. She took down two bows, her own and the one she made for Clarke, and started filling two quivers with arrows. Clarke also rose from the table and began pulling on her fur coat and boots. Osprey had been teaching her to hunt and shoot with a bow, and she’d improved greatly over the past few months. But she wanted—no, needed—to be as good a shot as she could possibly be for her people now. Clarke buckled the quiver to her waist and pulled on her gloves, then put her head and left arm through the bow to keep it resting on her right shoulder. The two women walked out onto the deck of the treehouse, and Clarke pulled the hidden string that controlled the wooden bar to lock the door behind them. In front of her, Osprey took a small running start and then leaped off of the deck towards a large tree standing a few yards from the treehouse. She caught herself in a swing on one of the branches, then planted her feet on another. She quickly climbed up another couple of yards until she was standing on a cluster of branches that she’d bound together to make a sort of bridge between the tree and the one in front of it. She gracefully took off sprinting down the bridge, leaving Clarke to take her own running leap off of the deck after her.

▪ ▪ ▪

Six days later the two women sat still and quiet in the middle branches of a large oak tree. They both had their gazes fixed upon a small white rabbit that was poking around in the bushes below them on the ground. Osprey’s eyes flicked up to Clarke, who was holding an arrow taught in her bow. Rabbits were some of the hardest prey for Clarke to shoot, since they were so small and moved so quickly. In other words, they were the perfect targets for her to practice her aim on. This was the farthest away she had ever attempted to shoot one, and she knew a successful shot would be a perfect demonstration of her readiness to shoot in a real fight. Beads of sweat gathered on her forehead despite the cold. She noticed her breathing was shallow and her shoulders were stiff from concentration, and immediately relaxed and took a slow breath. She saw Osprey nod at this from the corner of her eye. She took one more deep breath in, and released the arrow as she exhaled.  


_Thwack!_ The arrow found its mark, and the rabbit fell over dead. The two friends caught eyes and smiled at each other. Osprey quickly descended the branches of the tree, swinging gracefully and landing firmly on the ground. Clarke followed suit (somewhat less gracefully, but she was getting better) as Osprey bent over to inspect the rabbit.  


“Very good, Clarke. You got it right through the eye, like I showed you. Now the pelt won’t be ruined,” she said, smiling up at Clarke as she approached the kill. 

She took out the arrow and placed it inside her quiver, then handed the dead rabbit to Clarke to put into her game bag. Clarke smiled down at the dead rabbit in her hands for a moment before putting it away. For the first time in a long time, she felt…happy. Like she’d accomplished something positive without having to sacrifice herself in return. She’d finally gained something without having to lose something too. Suddenly she wished Bellamy was there to see her first perfect hunt. And just like that, the happiness turned heavy. He was the first one who taught her how to shoot. They’d been stuck together underground and had found some alcohol and guns. She remembered the tingling feeling she felt when he stood close to her and put his hands on her arms. That was the first time he’d ever really touched her. Clarke had never realized how much that moment stuck with her. But she pushed away the memory—and the rising tingling feeling in her chest—as she shoved the rabbit in her knapsack.  


“I think this means you’re ready to protect your friends. There is always room for improvement, but I think you can safely hold your own with a bow without me having to cover your ass,” Osprey said, playfully chucking a rock at Clarke. “Your knife skills are a different story, though,” she added teasingly.  


“Oh, shut up,” Clarke responded.  


The two women began walking back towards the treehouse, joking about Clarke’s combat abilities and Osprey’s teaching style. When they had nearly reached their home, Clarke spotted a bush with spiky-edged leaves growing in clusters of two or three along the branches.  


“That’s a raspberry bush, right?” she asked, walking over and kneeling down in front of the plant and lightly touching its leaves.  


“Yes. One of the pregnancy plants. Do you remember what I said it was good for?”  


“Strengthens the uterus, increases milk production, relieves pains,” she answered as she began to pluck clusters of the leaves and put them in her bag.  


“Very good. It’s also good for menstrual—Clarke, move away from there!” Osprey shouted suddenly.  


“Huh? What is it?” Clarke said, surprised.  


Osprey grabbed Clarke’s arm and pulled her up onto her feet, away from the bush. She then pointed to a bright orange fungus growing on the base of a dead log that had been right by Clarke’s foot.  


“I didn’t see it at first because it was covered by the leaves. That was close,” Osprey said, keeping her gaze on the fungus as if it was going to rear up and attack her.  


“What is it?” Clarke asked, confused.  


“The Trigedakru call it _fayawamplei_. Fire death. Even the slightest touch on your bare skin will give you a deadly fever. And hallucinations. Horrific hallucinations.”  


The two women stood staring at the orange fungus—Clarke with a look of apprehension, and Osprey with a look of recalling some unwanted memory.  


“Have you ever been exposed to it?” Clarke asked.  


“No. But I’ve seen what it does to people who have. The worst part is that it won’t kick in until a few days after exposure, so a lot of people don’t even realize they touched it until suddenly they’re seeing spiders crawling out of everyone’s eyes.”  


Clarke shuddered at her words.  


“Be very, very careful not to touch it. I’ve had years of practice looking out for this stuff everywhere I go and before I touch anything. Luckily it’s bright orange, so it’s usually easy to see. But you need to start being mindful of it. Remember what I said when I was giving you your first forest survival lessons—pay attention to where you put your hands and feet. Always.”  


Clarke nodded, and glanced at the _fayawamplei_ once more over her shoulder as they walked away. How many times had she or Bellamy or any of their people come close to touching it? She didn’t recall ever noticing it before, so perhaps it wasn’t that common. She shrugged off the mental image of someone burning up in a delirious fever and instead thought of the rabbit stew she was going to make them for dinner. She was going to need her strength; tomorrow, she faced the mountain once again.


	2. Return to the Mountain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 Playlist  
> *special note--I found that songs by The Strokes really inspire me for Bellamy. The deep voice of the lead singer and the angry sound of the music fits him perfectly.  
> #1: On The Other Side, by The Strokes  
> #2: A Message, by Coldplay  
> Heart in a Cage, by The Strokes  
> Colossal, by Wolfmother  
> Vagabond, by Wolfmother  
> I Can See Your Tracks, by Laura Veirs

Bellamy sat staring into the distant trees, his gun propped up on his leg and his new, crudely-made fur jacket pulled close around him. He sat atop one of the new scaffold lookouts at either side of the gate’s main entrance, set just level with the top of the electric fence surrounding Camp Jaha. The lookout gave him a good vantage point, but the air was a good few degrees colder at this height above the ground, though Bellamy would never be caught dead complaining about it. He was nearing the end of his watch shift, and good thing too, since he doubted if he’d be able to feel his fingers well enough to fire the gun if something happened. _“It’s going to be REALLY fun once it starts snowing,”_ Miller had moaned when Bellamy came to replace him. Bellamy heaved a deep sigh as he realized Miller was right.  


Inevitably, his thoughts turned to Clarke, as they did so often now that winter was setting in. Had she found some way to keep warm? Did she have a plan for when it started snowing? Was she even still alive to feel the cold? An all-to-familiar image of Clarke lying frostbitten and dying on the ground came to his mind; he’d pictured it often. Every time he led a hunting group or scouting group or scavenge group out into the forest, a knot the size of a basketball formed in his gut and refused to dissipate until he got back to camp, having returned once again without finding her dead body out there somewhere.  


Sometimes he felt genuinely angry with her for doing this. For putting him through all this worry and fear. For leaving everyone at camp behind. Wasn’t three months long enough? She’ll be sorry when she’s freezing her ass off in the snow, Bellamy thought angrily sometimes. But then worry replaced the anger and he was back to square one. Bellamy understood her self-induced exile, he really did. Sometimes the ghosts of all the bad things he’d done came creeping up on the edges of his vision and he had to clench his fists until he nearly bled to push them away. But he was used to being on the wrong side of things. Clarke was better than him. The darkness tormented her. She’d never asked for power, and yet her hands were dirty from all the decisions other people forced on her. He couldn’t blame her for wanting to go away, to ensure that no one could pile any more choices on her shoulders. I would have made sure no one did, Bellamy thought. If she’d stayed. But deep down Bellamy knew that Clarke’s bleeding heart wouldn’t allow her to sit back and let others make the decisions. She was a natural leader, and so would rise to the occasion whether she realized she was doing it or not. So she had to cut herself off completely. It was the only way she wouldn’t get sucked back into it.  


Bellamy also knew Clarke well enough to know that she couldn’t stay away forever. Inevitably, some new threat would endanger the camp and Clarke would come riding out of the forest in shining armor, sword raised high. Bellamy smirked at the mental image of it. The Warrior Princess. How he wished she’d come riding out of those woods right now. He really tried not to, but he couldn’t help but to think _“today could be the day she comes back”_ every morning when he woke up and pulled on his clothes. All he could do in the meantime was bury himself in the distractions of the camp, and there were plenty. Especially now that three women were pregnant. Some of the people were excited about it; Bellamy could overhear them talking about creating a miniature sort of school and setting aside furs and cloth to make baby clothes. Others were terrified. Bellamy fell more into the latter group. How were they going to keep these children alive? And now that they knew the birth control implants were running out, how many more pregnancies were they going to have to deal with at one time? They needed a new form of birth control—besides abstinence, which obviously wasn’t going to work—to maintain some kind of balance.  


The worries of the camp successfully distracted Bellamy from stressing about Clarke until the end of his watch shift.  


“Oi! Blake! Time’s up man!” came a shout from the ground below him. Bellamy looked down at his replacement before slowly stirring himself from the position he’d been sitting in for the past several hours. The cold air felt even colder on the parts of him that had managed to get warm. As he climbed down the wooden scaffold, he realized it had gotten dark very quickly. The shortening days made everyone at the camp feel unsettled, as if winter was slowly closing in around them and sucking all of the light out of the world. No one had really gotten used to it; sometimes people would have to stop in the middle of chopping wood or sewing fur jackets because the darkness crept up on them.  


“Make sure you stay warm up there. Especially now that the sun’s gone down. Do you have gloves?” Bellamy asked once his boots had reached the ground.  


“Yeah, and the captain gave me these little balls of clay that have been heated up in a fire to hold in my hands, too,” replied Bellamy’s replacement. He was a younger boy, one of the 100, named Calvin. Bellamy nodded and handed him the gun, then watched to make sure he made it all the way to the top of the lookout tower before briskly walking inside the remains of the Ark that formed the hub of Camp Jaha.  


Thankfully inside it was warm. Lincoln had shown them how to make oil from animal fat to run the generators, so they would have light and heat through the long winter nights. Raven and Wick were working on a way to disperse the heat more efficiently and evenly throughout the entire ship, so that everyone wouldn’t have to sit huddled in the generator rooms. Bellamy walked his way through the halls until he came to the kitchen and dining area, which was still full of people even though most had eaten dinner hours ago. He scooped out a portion of canned beans and took a few pieces of jerky (another thing about surviving the winter that Lincoln had taught them), then found an empty table to sit at.  


As he ate, Bellamy looked at the people in the room around him. Despite the cold, despite the fact that they were all getting sick of canned vegetables and jerky already, and despite the fact that they were all living in the remains of a crashed space station in the middle of the woods surrounded by danger, they looked happy. The hall was filled with the sounds of chatting voices and the occasional burst of laughter. Bellamy suddenly realized something he liked about winter—it brought everyone together. The cold meant that people gathered in large rooms, and the presence of so many voices and bodies made everyone feel warmer. On one side of the room sat Lincoln with Octavia slouched against his chest, deep in some conversation. Miller and a group of the other guards were laughing heartily about something in the other corner. Even Jasper was looking relatively happy, though things had been hard for him since Maya’s death. Raven and Wick were flicking bits of bread at each other across one of the tables. It was almost…normal. As if this was the 100th winter they’d spent on the ground instead of the first. For a moment Bellamy had the idea to make this remark to a certain blonde that used to sit next to him, because it would have made her smile.  


And just like that the beans to turned to sawdust in his mouth. _It’s been three months for fuck’s sake_ , he thought to himself. _And she’s_ still _ruining my appetite._ Bellamy looked back at the happy faces around him. When she left, Clarke had said that she couldn’t stand to see their faces every day and be reminded of what she’d had to do. But would she really feel that way if she could see their faces now? Could she see the happiness and warmth that resided here—that she’d helped to create? It just didn’t seem complete without her. Bellamy began wondering if he was alone in feeling that way, though. Everyone seemed a little too content tonight for missing the central piece of their group. But it’s not like they ostracized her—she left of her own accord. What were they supposed to do? _Not sitting around moping about it_ , he chastised himself. He quickly picked up his spoon and began eating again, though his appetite was still ruined.

▪ ▪ ▪

“Alright, let’s go over the plan again,” Bellamy said a week later, standing in front of the gate entrance and facing his small scavenging team. Except this wasn’t an ordinary scavenging run—they were going back into Mt. Weather. Bellamy internally cringed at the thought of being back in that place, but he knew the layout better than anyone else, and he would never let someone else take the risk for him anyway.  


“The scouts told us that the Grounders are mostly located around the east and north sides of the mountain,” he continued. “They’re trying to get between us and it. So we’re going to have to take a wide swing around to the west side, wide enough that they hopefully won’t realize what we’re going for. Then we go in through the tunnel entrance that’s about half a mile from the base of the mountain.”  


He paused to make sure they were all following along with him. Miller nodded calmly, as did the other two guards. Monty and the medical assistant, named Jones, looked nervous. Bellamy wasn’t happy about bringing Monty along, but they had to be prepared for anything. There were all kinds of gadgets in that mountain that could make life a whole hell of a lot easier for them. Bellamy had been teaching him the basics of shooting a gun in the past week though, and he hoped it would be enough.  


“Once we’re inside, we’re going to have to be very careful to avoid attracting the attention of the remaining Reapers. There aren’t many, and our guns should be enough to take them out, but let’s try to avoid meeting them at all if we can. So that means no unnecessary noises. Each of us has a backpack, and the goal here is to fill each one of them up with supplies that we need before leaving the mountain. Jones and Monty are in charge of deciding what we take. Medicine and supplies for the children are priority. Do not just pick up random stuff you see in there without checking with Jones or Monty if it’s something we need. We don’t have space in our backpacks to fill them up with random crap.”  


He paused again to make sure each of them nodded before continuing on.  


“Once our packs are full, we exit the mountain on the south side. It’s safer to go out a different way than we came in case the Grounders try to ambush us, and the walk back will be a bit shorter. The idea here is to make it back before dark. If it gets dark, we don’t stop and camp. We’re doing this in one trip. Camping overnight gives the Grounders time to find us and attack us. We need to get these supplies back here at all costs. Understood?”  


“Yes, sir,” Miller and the two guards said firmly, nodding their heads. They and Jones dispersed to pick up their backpacks and fill their water bottles. Monty took the opportunity to approach Bellamy alone.  


“What are the odds we’ll find her there?” he asked. Bellamy knew exactly who he meant.  


“I don’t think she’ll be in the mountain. That place holds nothing but bad memories for her.”  


From the corner of his eye he saw Octavia approaching to wish him luck.  


“True, but with the weather getting colder…maybe she wouldn’t have much other choice. Me and Jasper and some of the others think it’s the most likely place she’ll be.”  


Octavia stood next to them now, listening to the conversation.  


“Well, if she is, it’ll be nice to know that she’s alive.”  


“You’ll try to convince her to come back, right? If you won’t, I will.”  


“She doesn’t want to come back, Monty,” Octavia said, cutting in. “If she did, she’d have done so already. Either that or she’s dead. Besides, who’s to say she’s wrong for staying away? She let a bomb drop on a whole village of people after—“  


“Octavia, that’s enough,” Bellamy said sternly, cutting her off. She snapped her head to glare at him. “You know as well as I do that letting all those people die wasn’t her idea. Sure, I’m pissed at her for risking your life and she was incredibly stupid for listening to Lexa, but she more than made up for it when she single-handedly saved not only the 47 but also everyone else from the Ark that got captured by those freaks.”  


Octavia opened her mouth to make some angry retort, but Bellamy cut her off once again.  


“Who made sure the rest of your friends are still alive? Who made sure there was a Camp Jaha for you to come back to, Octavia? It wasn’t me. And it sure as hell wasn’t the Grounders. And it wasn’t the Chancellor or Kane or anybody else. It was Clarke. You and I of all people know that happiness isn’t free. There’s always a price. And all the lazy evenings you get to spend cuddling up to Lincoln in the dining room are paid for by Clarke. If it weren’t for her, we’d all be in a rotting body pile with holes drilled in our backs.”  


Monty and Octavia stood staring at him in stunned silence. He hated talking to Octavia that way, but sometimes she needed someone to pull her head out of her ass. He could tell by the look in her eyes that something he’d said had clicked with her. _Good_ , he thought. _When Clarke does finally come back, she’ll need all the friends she can get_.  


“Let’s go. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover,” he said, turning to the rest of the team. 

▪ ▪ ▪

It was just after midday by the time the team reached the west side tunnel entrance. The sky was overcast and the air was the coldest it had been yet. Hiking through the woods was keeping them warm, however, and they were sweating underneath their fur coats.  


“Alright, this is the tunnel. Let’s take a moment to get some water and rest before we go in there,” Bellamy said to the group as he sat down on a large boulder and pulled out his water bottle.  


The team could see their panting breath in the air.  


“Let’s hope it’s warmer inside the mountain,” one of the guards said.  


“Perhaps a little, but the generators have been turned off in there for months,” Monty replied.  


"Which means there won’t be any lights, so we’re going to have to do all of our scavenging by flashlight,” Bellamy added. He pulled out a map of the mountain that Raven had drawn for them and laid it on the ground in front of the group. “These rooms here are where the schools were. We’re guessing there might be some medicine or supplies we can use for the children somewhere around there. Over here is where the medical centers were, so obviously those are a priority. We don’t know if they had a specific infant care room, but if they did, it would be around here,” he said pointing to the various places on the map. "And...we're going to do our best to avoid _here_ ," he said, indicating the fifth level area where there would now be hundreds of rotting corpses.  


Monty gave him a knowing look as the team began to talk amongst themselves about the quickest way to get to each area. When Bellamy took another drink from his water bottle, he had a strange sensation that was raising the hairs on the back of his neck—like they were being watched. He took a subtle look around them into the surrounding trees, and placed his gun on his lap—with his finger on the trigger—as casually as he could. Miller and one of the other guards noticed, and reached for their guns as well. This caused Monty, Jones, and the other guard to fall silent and look around at them with questioning faces.  


“Into the tunnel. Now,” Bellamy said quietly but firmly, keeping his eyes on the trees around them.  


Suddenly there was a whoosh and a _thwack!_ as an arrow hit its mark. To the right of the little team, a Grounder hit the ground and began rolling lifelessly down the hill towards them, an arrow sticking out of his chest.  


“GO!” Bellamy shouted, and the team frantically picked up their backpacks and scrambled towards the tunnel entrance. With a familiar battle cry, a group of around fifteen Grounders came running towards them from the ridge, weapons raised. A few of them hurled spears, but none hit their mark. Bellamy scrambled backwards towards the entrance of the tunnel, firing his gun at the oncoming Grounders as he went. He hit three or four of them, sending them tumbling down the hill, before he reached the entrance of the tunnel where the rest of the team was waiting. Bellamy watched as five more were taken down by arrows coming from somewhere up in the trees. Before he had time to raise it out loud, the answer to his question came dropping out of a tree across the clearing.  


She swung gracefully down from a branch, her golden hair flying behind her. It was the sight of her hair that did it; Bellamy’s stomach hit the floor like a dead Grounder. She wore a fur jacket that was much more well-made than the ones he and his team had, and she also carried a bow (where the hell did she get that?) that she was quickly firing arrows from. Somewhere that seemed like miles behind him he heard Monty yell “Clarke!” as the remaining Grounders turned around and ran for her instead. Bellamy snapped out of his stunned surprise and raised his gun, firing at three Grounders in quick succession who were closest to Clarke. She had aimed her bow at each one of them, but Bellamy had beaten her to the chase each time. After the third fell, the two of them caught eyes, and Clarke had a hilarious exasperated expression on her face. For the first time in three months, Bellamy laughed. What the hell was the matter with him? No, what the hell was going on? For a moment Bellamy completely forgot what he was even doing out here in the woods. The return of Clarke—and in actual warrior princess format no less, though she didn’t have shining armor and a horse—had pushed everything else from his mind.  


The moment broke when one of the Grounders got too close after dodging Clarke’s arrow for her to have time to redraw. Bellamy raised his gun again, but this time he was beaten to the chase by a second crazy warrior princess swooping down from a tree. She swung on a low branch and kicked the Grounder onto his back. Once on the ground, she drew two blades and began gracefully swirling and slicing through the oncoming Grounders as Clarke backed away, arrow at the ready. The two guards and Miller shot the remaining few Grounders that weren’t being dispatched by Warrior Princess #2, until there were none left. Bellamy, Monty, and the rest of the team emerged slowly from the entrance of the tunnel and stared wordlessly at the two women who stood facing them.  


“Well. Go team,” said the second woman sarcastically.  


Bellamy kept his eyes fixed on Clarke, who smirked at the other woman’s words before meeting his gaze. She wasn’t able to hold it for long though, and her eyes flickered over to Monty, to whom she smiled sheepishly.  


“Clarke! I knew we’d see you here! Where did you learn to shoot a bow like that?” Monty asked excitedly as he ran up and hugged her, not even waiting for an answer to his question.  


“It’s good to see you, Monty,” she said, hugging him back.  


The sound of Clarke’s voice rang in Bellamy’s ears. He was glad Monty was doing something, because he seemed suddenly unable of speaking or moving. He had imagined what he would say when he saw her again many times, but he never imagined their first meeting would be like this. He was utterly at a loss, and trying not to show it.  


Miller, Jones, and the two guards uttered greetings to her as well, and then they all fell silent and looked at Bellamy.  


“That was quite a show, Princess,” he said, trying to hold back a smile. “I’m glad to see your little hiatus hasn’t been a complete waste of time.”  


Clarke’s face broke into a full-on smile. God, he thought he would never see that sight again.  


“It’s good to see you too, Bellamy. Even if you are stealing all my shots,” she said, and the two stood smiling at each other for a short moment.  


The second woman coughed knowingly.  


“As nice as this reunion is, we really shouldn’t stand around here with our thumbs up our asses. It’s not safe.”  


For the first time since she appeared from the trees, Bellamy actually looked at her. Her long reddish-brown hair and green eyes seemed incredibly familiar, as did the snarky tone of her voice. But it couldn’t be…  


“ _Osprey?!_ ” he said incredulously. “How…?”  


She laughed heartily at his expression.  


“Good to see you Bellamy. Still bossing everyone around, I see. Even when they should be giving you orders instead,” she said, indicating the two older guards with a nod of her head. “How’s Octavia liking life outside the box?”  


“Wait—you’ve been alive down here all this time?”  


“Hang on,” Monty chipped in. “Is that Osprey Hale? _The_ notorious Osprey Hale, Ark Legend and Joyrider Extraordinaire?”  


Jones and the two guards muttered something among themselves and looked at her in disbelief.  


“Is that what they call me? Well, it’s certainly better than 'Human Popsicle.' Look, I know you’ve got questions, but it’s a long story and—“  


She was cut off by an arrow whizzing past Clarke’s head and landing in a nearby tree.  


“—We really need to get out of here,” she finished.  


The two guards began firing into the woods at the unseen attackers as Bellamy grabbed Monty by the sleeve and pulled him towards the entrance of the tunnel once again. They had a mission, and all of these unexpected events were getting them off track. Bellamy was secretly glad to see Clarke and Osprey follow them into the tunnel. The group ran a ways into the darkness before stopping to pull out flashlights and catch their breath.  


“I don’t think they’re following us,” Miller said, keeping his gun pointed behind them anyway.  


“No, but that means they’ll be waiting for us to come back out,” Bellamy panted. “Good thing we we’re going out a different way.”  


“Which way?” Clarke asked.  


“The south tunnel.”  


“Forget it,” Osprey said. “They’re going to have groups stationed outside each tunnel now. Go out through the east. It’s the closest to your camp.”  


"But they have a larger number stationed there,” Bellamy replied.  


“Clarke and I will help you punch through them. If you go out the south tunnel, they’ll overrun you. They move through these woods a lot quicker than you do. And you’ll be ambushed by the east group. And it’s going to start snowing any minute. You need to get back to your camp as quickly as possible.”  


Bellamy nodded at her, a serious expression on his face. She then turned to Clarke.  


“We should go back out and move around the mountain to the east side. We could start picking off Trigedakru.”  


Clarke shook her head.  


“I think we should stick with them. We can help them find supplies so they can get out of here quicker, and we could be overwhelmed by Grounders trying to take them on by ourselves.”  


Osprey grimaced, but didn’t disagree with her.  


“I know you don’t like the idea of being in the mountain, Oz. Neither do I. But if I can do it, you can do it, and it’s the best plan,” Clarke said. Bellamy caught her eyes flickering to him as she said it.  


“C’mon, we need to get going,” he said. 

Inside the mountain was a bit warmer than the frigid air outside, but not by much. The group headed to the medical facilities first, though Bellamy, Monty, and Clarke all shuddered when they set foot inside it. _“God, it’s like being back on the Ark in here_ ,” Osprey had said with an exaggerated gag when they got inside. They did find delivery and infant care rooms, which contained prenatal vitamins, powdered baby formula, antibiotics, baby bottles, morphine, and random medical supplies like rubber gloves and syringes. Monty managed to find a few baby monitors and digital thermometers as well. They bagged as much as their backpacks could hold, and decided not to go by the school area in order to get back to Camp Jaha as quickly as possible. As they were walking towards the east tunnel entrance of the mountain, Clarke stepped in line with Bellamy and pulled a bundle of herbs tied in a leather bag out of her knapsack.  


“These are plants that will help with pregnancy. Osprey taught me about them. This one is raspberry leaf, and will help with pain, producing milk, and strengthening the uterus. This is peppermint, and it’s good for relieving nausea. This one is jasmine and this is cotton root—both are good for stimulating labor, but shouldn’t be used any other time during pregnancy. Can you remember that?”  


“Yeah, I think so. Clarke, how did you know? You had to have gathered all this before you came in here and saw us collect a bunch of baby formula,” he asked.  


“Osprey keeps an eye on the camp,” she said slowly, looking away. “That’s how we knew you were coming out here, and what for.”  


Bellamy smirked at her knowingly. He knew she would never really be able to completely leave their people behind. She still cared too much, and couldn’t help getting involved. What a mother hen. Bellamy was glad though; it meant that she would come back one day—possibly even now.  


“Bellamy! I heard something behind us,” called Miller from the back of the group. They all stopped walking and turned to listen. They could ear running footsteps and banging coming towards them.  


“Reapers,” Osprey said. “Run!”  


The group took off sprinting down the hallway, but were suddenly cut off by three Reapers that came running around the corner. Two of them were on them before Bellamy could fully raise his gun, causing Clarke to dart into a room to the left as Monty and Miller went to the right. One Reaper followed Clarke, while the other two descended on the rest of them. A scuffle ensued as Bellamy tried to knock the Reapers off of him with the butt of his gun. Osprey slit one of their throats and a guard shot the other. Clarke cried out from the other room, and Bellamy dashed inside. She was on the floor holding a bleeding gash in her leg, and the Reaper was also on the floor reaching for his sword. Bellamy took him out with two bullets and went over to help Clarke.  


“How bad is it?” he asked as he knelt down beside her.  


“It’s not bad. I think I can still put some weight on it,” she said through her gritted teeth. “What is this stuff?”  


She was looking at an orange liquid that was covering her left hand and soaking her pant leg around where it was cut open, mixing with the blood from her wound. Bellamy lifted her leg up carefully, and saw that she had broken some kind of vial containing the stuff underneath her when she fell. There was a stack of them knocked over on the countertop behind her.  


“I don’t know. Probably some kind of medicine or solution the Mountain Men cooked up. It smells bad, but that seems to be about it. Come on, we have to get you up,” he said, pulling her to her feet and putting her arm around his shoulders.  


Osprey glanced at her leg as they came back into the hallway.  


“I’ll be able to fix her up,” she said to Bellamy. “We need to move quickly.”  


“We should take her back to Camp Jaha and let her mom help her,” Monty said, jogging behind them.  


“No,” Clarke said. “I have plenty of supplies back at the—back where we live. I’ll be fine, Monty. I’ll only slow you guys down, and you need to get back to camp before the Grounders can catch you.”  


“Won’t the Grounders catch _you_?” Bellamy asked.  


“They’re more interested in you. And they don’t know where we live,” Osprey said.  


They managed to get through the rest of the hallways and the relatively short stretch of the east tunnel without any more run-ins with Reapers. When they reached the tunnel entrance, they positioned themselves along the walls, Bellamy and Monty in front, the two guards behind them on either side, then Osprey and Clarke with bows drawn, and Jones and Monty in the back. They edged carefully towards the entrance and saw a group of Grounders waiting for them outside. To everyone’s surprise but Osprey’s, the ground was covered in a thick blanket of snow, and a thick veil of it continued to fall. The whiteness was nearly blinding after the darkness of the mountain and tunnel, but at Bellamy’s signal, they attacked.  


The guns worked their magic. They managed to mow down most of the Grounders as they charged forward, and pressed onwards until they were all outside of the tunnel. Osprey and Clarke stayed towards the back with Monty and Jones, picking off Grounders with their arrows while Bellamy and the other three men charged at them with the guns. In a matter of minutes, they had taken the whole group of Grounders down, though they weren’t all dead.  


“Go now, while you have a head start. Your camp is dead east. There’s about 6 inches of snow in the clearing here, but it won’t be nearly as thick in the forest. Just be careful about slipping. There will be ice,” Osprey said as Bellamy nodded.  


He knew they needed to go quickly, but he hesitated. He didn’t like leaving Clarke behind, especially when she was injured. There were so many things he wanted to say and questions he needed to ask, and he didn’t know when (or if) he’d ever see her again. Monty seemed hesitant about walking away without her too.  


“Come on Bellamy,” said Jones, who was gripping his fur coat around him in the cold. “We’re on a mission and we have to get back by dark.”  


Bellamy clenched his jaw as he looked at Clarke. She caught his gaze and nodded.  


“I’ll be fine. We’ll cover you as you go,” she said.  


They heard shouting in the distance.  


“Time to move,” Osprey said. She slung Clarke’s arm around her shoulder and began trudging with her through the snow. Bellamy watched as the pure white snow turned red with her blood. There was a knot the size of a basketball in his gut again, but he was responsible for getting everyone else back to Camp Jaha safely. He turned and led them into the woods, his knuckles turning white where he clenched his gun. 

▪ ▪ ▪

Osprey and Clarke waited silently behind a cluster of bushes as a group of Grounders ran out of the woods and saw their brethren strewn across the small clearing. They watched from their hiding place as two Grounders ran off in the direction of Bellamy and his team, but they came back a few moments later. The leader of the group decided they would give up pursuing them in order to get the wounded from the failed ambush back to healers at their village.  


As she watched, Clarke struggled to keep her vision focused. She had started feeling woozy and sweaty when they were running through the tunnels, but she chalked it up to shock and blood loss from her injury. She was beginning to get a little worried now, though, since she could hear her pulse hammering in her ears and the world was slowly spinning around her. Osprey was saying something to her as the Grounder group disappeared in the other direction, carrying their wounded with them. But her voice sounded muffled and far way.  


“Clarke? You don’t look so good. C’mon. We need to get you back quickly so that wound doesn’t get infected,” Osprey said as she lifted Clarke to her feet once again. She swayed on her feet dangerously, and Osprey caught her before she fell. She looked at her friend with a puzzled expression. The wound didn’t seem that bad. Maybe Clarke hadn’t been injured much before and she was prone to fainting. She decided she needed to get Clarke back to the treehouse as quickly as possible instead of taking their usual roundabout route as a precaution in case they were followed.  


As Osprey led her through the woods, practically dragging her along as quickly as she could go, Clarke’s pulse began to race. The falling snowflakes were swirling and distorting around her. The whiteness grew brighter and brighter and burned her eyes. Then suddenly, the white began turning to red. The snowflakes were melting in the air, revealing drops of blood at their cores. The snow on the ground melted into massive pools of blood that surrounded her on all sides. She frantically looked down and realized she was covered in it. Then bodies began to bob to the surface of the blood pools—women, children, men in hazmat suits whose faces she vaguely recognized. Maya. The President. The dead Mountain Men were staring up at her with glassy eyes from their bloody graves. That’s when she began to scream. 


	3. The Fire Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 Playlist  
> #1: Psycho, by Muse  
> Angel on Fire, by Antony and the Johnsons  
> Mercy, by Muse  
> 

The team hustled quickly and quietly through the forest. Bellamy led them, his hands constantly gripped tightly on his gun, determined to get them back to the camp before night fell. The sun was already low in the sky, and the snow was slowing them down. _Not to mention this damned ice_ , Bellamy thought as he heard Monty slip for the millionth time behind him. He tried desperately to keep his mind focused on the task at hand and the team that needed him, but he couldn’t help but to think of Clarke and Osprey trying to make it through the same difficult conditions. And Clarke was leaving a trail of blood behind her…

His mind turned to the vials of antibiotics in his backpack. No one had taken count of how many they’d retrieved from the mountain. It would be relatively easy to bring one to Clarke. _Just in case_ , he thought. _Just so they’ll have one on hand for emergencies_.

“Up ahead!” Miller called, breaking Bellamy from his thoughts.

The clearing and tall fence of Camp Jaha was visible a few hundred yards in the distance.

“We made it!” Monty called happily. “And before dark!” 

Bellamy came to a stop at the edge of the tree line, and the group gathered around him, catching their breath.

“Monty,” he said, pulling his backpack around to his chest. “I’m going to give you the antibiotics in my pack. You all go on—I’m going to stay here and watch until each of you gets through that fence.”

They all looked at him with confused expressions—everyone except Monty.

“Are you sure you can find her?” he asked.

“I’m sure as hell going to try.”

“This is foolish, Bellamy. The mission was for all of us to get back to the camp before dark. We can’t afford to lose you—or your gun—for a wild goose chase!” Jones protested.

“I don’t think the Chancellor is going to be upset with me for making sure her daughter remains alive,” Bellamy responded sternly.

Jones clenched his jaw, but said no more.

“Sprint as quickly as you can to the gates,” Bellamy ordered as he began emptying the medical supplies from his backpack into Monty’s. “And don’t turn back, no matter what. Even if I suddenly get ambushed by Grounders. Is that clear?”

They nodded, and the team moved to the tree line to prepare. Bellamy reached into his backpack, and felt that only one vial of antibiotics was left inside. He slowly pulled his hand back out empty. His gaze met Monty’s, and Monty nodded knowingly.

“Miller,” Bellamy called. “Make sure they know we were ambushed by Grounders at the mountain, and get everyone prepared to defend the camp. I don’t think the Grounders are foolish enough to launch an attack, but it might be unsafe for anyone to leave for a while.”

Miller nodded, and Bellamy watched as the team went sprinting off through the snow-covered field. They had trouble moving quickly in the stuff, but they made it to the gate with no problems. Bellamy nodded as the gates closed behind them, and turned to face the woods once more. He was able to move much more quickly back through the woods by himself, but he was jumpy; every snapping twig or leaf rustling had him pointing his gun, ready to fire on a Grounder ambush. He made it back to the clearing in half an hour, and saw that the Grounders had taken their dead and wounded away. More snow had fallen, beginning to cover up the signs of the battle. He was still able to make out Osprey and Clarke’s trail leading off in the other direction, and quickly began to follow it. He tried not to think too much about the drops of blood along the trail that hadn’t yet been obscured by the snow. He had no idea how far away their “home” was, but he desperately hoped he could find it before dark. The temperature was dropping rapidly and Bellamy was not prepared to spend a night in the snow.

After half an hour of following the two women’s trail, he noticed something strange in the tracks. It looked like there was some kind of scuffle—but it seemed as though it had been between the two women, since there were no other trails marring the perfect blanket of snow. Looking ahead, Bellamy guessed Osprey had begun to drag Clarke through the snow. Tightening his grip on his gun and knitting his brow into a worried frown, Bellamy pressed onwards, driven by the panic rising in his chest.

▪▪▪

Fire. Everything was on fire. Clarke’s very veins burned underneath her skin. Each pulse of her heart sent another excruciating jolt through her body, and she could distinctly feel every single one. The flames even distorted her vision, turning everything red and hazy. Only the horrific faces distracted her from the burning—faces boiling and melting grotesquely from radiation and screaming in distorted agony. Clarke began to panic that she was also melting—that must be the cause of the fire inside her skin. Looking down at her arms, she saw the boils form and pop, and her skin begin to fall away like wax. She opened her mouth to scream, only to realize that she had already been screaming. Where was she? What happened to the forest? Now instead of trees, there were only people— _her_ people, and the Mountain Men she’d murdered in cold blood, and the Grounders she had let die in Ton DC—staring at her with damnation in their eyes. They were shouting things at her all at once, but Clarke couldn’t understand. They pointed long fingers at her that turned into knives.

Maya came crawling up to her from nowhere, grabbing at her ankles and staring up at her with a face deformed by radiation.

“NO! Maya PLEASE!” Clarke pleaded. “I had to do it! I didn’t want to! PLEASE I DID’T WANT TO KILL THEM! You know that, you _have_ to know that!”

“YOU should have died instead of them! YOU should have died instead of ME!” she screamed with a distorted voice.

Jasper appeared beside her and gripped Clarke’s arm painfully, pure hatred in his eyes.

“You should have died instead of her,” he said darkly.

The faces of the dead Mountain Men and Grounders chimed in with a chorus of “Murderer! Murderer!”

“Now you will die like _she_ did,” Jasper said, raising a knife to slash her.

Clarke screamed and began to flail and kick wildly. What was restraining her? Why couldn’t she run? She realized that someone was grabbing her around her chest, and with a sickening twist in her stomach she realized it was Finn, his body ripped and bleeding from a thousand knife cuts.

“I LOVED YOU CLARKE!” He screamed at her. “That’s why I DIED! That’s why they will ALL DIE!”

Clarke watched in horror as new faces emerged from the trees around her. Octavia, her mother, Lexa, Raven…each of them appeared to cry out to her for a moment, only to be burned alive by flames from a missile that fell upon their heads. Clarke screamed for them, and began to kick and thrash wildly again in Finn’s painful grip.

“You can’t save them. They don’t want you to kill for them anymore!” Finn said bitterly in her ear. “You have to be put down like the monster you are. Just like I was put down for the monster you made me become!”

“No, no NO!” Clarke moaned, shaking her head and feeling the hot tears running down her face. She jammed her elbows into Finn’s chest and sides as hard as she could and pulled against his grip, but she could not free herself from his arms, which turned into searing hot chains. The smell of her burning flesh made her vomit.

“BELLAMY! Help me!” she sobbed once the vomiting stopped. To her surprise and brief moment of relief, Bellamy appeared from the red flames in front of her.

“ _Bellamy!_ Tell them! Tell them why we had to…” Clarke’s voice trailed off as she saw his expression. He was staring back at her with a piercing coldness that she suddenly realized she had never seen him look at her with before. The brief moment of relief she’d felt began sinking into despair and gut-wrenching fear as the chains dragged her away from Bellamy, who only stood watching through the flames with a look of hatred that cut her deeper than the rest. If Bellamy didn’t understand…if he knew she was a monster too…if he wouldn’t help her…then she was truly alone. For the first time since the burning started, she let out a cry not of physical pain, but of a heavy pain somewhere deep inside of her that felt like all of gravity in the universe had shifted to her chest, collapsing everything inside of her like a dying star. One last time she thrashed and screamed, and finally her chains broke away. She felt herself falling…falling and burning… _please_ , she thought. _Please just let me die_.

▪▪▪

Osprey came to, lying on the floor of the treehouse’s kitchen where she had been knocked out cold by Clarke’s fist. She felt fuzzy, only aware for a moment of the warm sticky stuff covering her nose and mouth, and the taste of something metallic on her tongue. She was also aware that someone was shaking her and calling her name repeatedly. Opening her eyes, she felt a moment of extreme confusion upon seeing Bellamy Blake kneeling down beside her.

“Osprey? What happened? Where’s Clarke?” Bellamy asked, the sound of panic growing in his voice and a familiar knot of worry in his brow that she remembered from years ago.

 She blinked and sat up slowly, feeling the sharp pains in her sides where Clarke had repeatedly elbowed her as she frantically dragged her friend through the icy woods back to the treehouse. _Oh!_ The pains in her sides the blood covering her face had sent the memories of the past few hours flooding back in. She stared at the room around her with wide, panicked eyes for a moment, realizing that Clarke was gone.

“ _FUCK!_ ”

“What?!” Bellamy asked, exasperated. “Osprey _what happened?!_ ”

She pulled herself to her feet, grimacing at the sharp pains in her sides. The front door was wide open, and snow was blowing in the entrance with the howling wind. Dusk had fallen in the forest. One look at Clarke’s eyes had told Osprey everything she needed to know about what had caused her friend to suddenly start screaming bloody murder as they were leaving the clearing: _fayawamplei_. The massively dilated pupils that totally eclipsed her irises were unmistakable. Osprey hated that the most about _fayawamplei_ —it made her feel like she was staring into an empty abyss when she looked into their eyes. Like there was no longer a person there, only a void of horror.

“ _Fayawamplei_ ,” she said, finally meeting Bellamy’s gaze.

“What?”

“Fire death. It’s a fungus that grows in the woods. It causes extreme hallucinations and pain. Clarke…got exposed to it somehow,” she said as she hurried to the doorway and looked down at the ground through the fading light and whipping snow. The ladder was still extended to the ground—she hadn’t had time to pull it back up before Clarke knocked her out. She saw what looked like a dip in the snow next to the fresh tracks Bellamy had made.

“Clarke must have fallen,” she realized.

With a jolt, Osprey quickly descended the ladder, hoping she would still be able to follow Clarke’s tracks despite the snow that had fallen over them.

“Wait—you’re telling me Clarke knocked you out and fell down the ladder?” Bellamy said, hurrying down after her.

“She’s having powerful and terrifying hallucinations. She was screaming—saying things. I got her back here as fast as I could, but she was kicking and flailing everywhere…”

“So Clarke is out there in the dark somewhere right now, tripping her ass off from some _fungus?!_ ”Bellamy said, beginning to yell. “With an injured _leg?!_ ”

“ _Yes_ , Bellamy. Her injured leg is now only one item on a long list of things for us to be completely terrified about!” she said sternly, beginning to yell herself and turning to face him. “I’ve seen what this fungus does to people. We _have_ to find her. _Now_. Before she gets to stage two.”

“So terrifying hallucinations are only stage one? What’s stage two?”

“The part that most people don’t survive.”

Bellamy stood staring at her for a moment, an unreadable expression on his face. Then he began to frantically walk in a circle around the area, looking for signs of where Clarke could have gone. Squinting in the dark, he noticed the depression of a trail leading into the woods. Heart racing, he followed it with Osprey close behind. They nearly lost the trail several times where the trees were denser and less snow reached the ground, causing Bellamy’s stomach to knot and twist painfully until they found it again. He had pulled the flashlight out of his backpack to guide their way, but all he seemed to be able to see in the beam were thick snowflakes rushing past them.

As they neared the creek, Bellamy lost complete track of the trail, but it no longer mattered; he could hear Clarke’s heavy breathing and hoarse crying from somewhere on the bank. He cleared the trees and saw the dark shape of Clarke huddled and shaking violently at the edge of the frozen water.

“Clarke! _Clarke!_ ” he shouted, quickly closing the distance between them. She didn’t seem to hear him, or else she didn’t react if she did.

“Clarke, look at me,” he said more gently as he knelt down beside her, putting his hand on her trembling shoulder.

“She can’t hear you,” Osprey said quietly behind him. Bellamy turned to look up at her in desperation. “She’s progressed to stage two,” Osprey continued, kneeling down on the other side of Clarke and gingerly taking her forearm into her hands.

 Bellamy stared in horror. It looked as though she had tried to cut something out of the back of her own arm with a jagged piece of sharp ice that was now lying bloody on her lap. He tore his eyes away from what Clarke had done to herself and stared at Osprey with his mouth agape, unable to form words.

“She’s trying to claw out her own veins,” Osprey said, answering his unspoken question. “To her it feels like fire running through them. She will continue to try to cut them out until this stage passes. She can’t think of anything else.”

Bellamy looked back at Clarke. She was shivering so violently and had so little energy that she could only numbly and pathetically scratch the open wound repeatedly. Realization made Bellamy’s stomach drop: the freezing temperature was killing her faster than the wounds or the godforsaken fungus. Bellamy quickly scooped Clarke up in his arms, and the knot of fear deepened in his gut as he noticed that Clarke was too weak to resist. Then he began to run. Back through the dark trees, back through the swirling snow blowing around him from all directions. He vaguely registered seeing the beam of the flashlight ahead of him as Osprey tried to light the way. He must have been going the wrong direction, because Osprey sprinted ahead of him and veered to the left, and Bellamy wasted no time in following her.  Only one string of thought ran through his mind as he watched the trees ahead of him appear in the flashlight’s beam before disappearing back into the darkness: _please no please no please no_ …Bellamy didn’t even know who he was saying please _to_ ; he just knew that if Clarke died right there in his arms, he…he…he didn’t know what. It was like his mind hit a solid and very imposing wall at the thought of her being gone where he couldn’t find her again. He’d already known that he was willing to die for her; he knew that the day he went into the mountain by her command. But now he fully understood why: he literally couldn’t imagine the future without her. Their lives had been in danger so many times, but never had he actually considered the reality of her dying. Or rather, every time she’d come close before, he’d had some kind of power to stop it. But now there was no bullet or knife to step in front of. He couldn’t protect her from this. With her dying weakly in his arms, there was nothing he could do but run.

Finally, _finally_ the treehouse took shape in the trees above them. Without missing a beat he slung Clarke over his shoulder and began climbing the icy ladder behind Osprey. His hands felt dangerously numb and burned each time he gripped another frozen rung, but he kept going up, up, up for what felt like another eternity. One hand after the other. Once at the top, he stood holding Clarke in the kitchen and watched Osprey dart through a fur flap into the second room. She reemerged with what looked like a pile of fur that she laid flat on the floor in front of the metal oven. Bellamy understood what she was aiming for, and laid Clarke gently down on the furs as Osprey darted back into the other room. He tried not to stare into her pitch-black pupils that looked the size of quarters, or her lips that had turned a scary shade of dark purple. Osprey returned with another set of furs, which Bellamy grabbed from her and slung over the trembling Clarke.

He rubbed her arms up and down on top of the furs to try and create some friction to warm her up. Meanwhile Osprey was determinedly swooping around the room like the bird she was named for; she went back to the front and closed the door, barring it against the wind, then barred all the windows shut as well. With overwhelming relief she remembered that she and Clarke had collected a large stack of dry firewood the day before (had it really only been a day ago?), which sat waiting by the stove. She hastily crammed some sticks and branches inside the oven, and Bellamy watched her trembling hands fumble with the flint several times before she was able to make a spark. She had difficulty catching her breath enough to blow the fire to life, so Bellamy turned to help her. Together the two of them quickly got the flames going.

“We need to stitch up her arm and her leg while she’s sedate,” Osprey said after a moment of watching the flames.

“Sedate?” Bellamy asked darkly, unable to tear his eyes away from the flames reflected in Clarke’s black eyes.

“Once she warms up, we’ll have to keep her restrained for a little while.”

Not saying a word, Bellamy gently pulled Clarke’s injured arm out from under the furs and held it carefully in his hands. Osprey went over to the medicine cupboard to remove some supplies, but she still heard Bellamy’s deep breath and subsequent gulp as he prepared himself for the longest night of his life.


	4. Fire and Ice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 4 Playlist:  
> #1: Madness, by Muse   
> Hurt, by Johnny Cash  
> Within, by Daft Punk  
> If I Ever Leave This World Alive, by Flogging Molly

Clarke didn’t understand where she was. The faces—the horrible, rotting faces—were gone, replaced by a searing fire inside her veins that occupied her every thought. She’d tried to cut it out. She remembered thinking, _if only I could get my veins open…the fire would come out with the blood…I only need to bleed just enough to get the fire out, then I can stich myself back up…_ she’d cut her veins open on the back of her arm, for the doctor in her was still present enough in the midst of the delirium to know that if she cut on the inside, she wouldn’t be able to control the bleeding and would be dead in minutes.

_Perhaps I should just die…it’d be easier, so much easier…one little cut on the wrist…_ she’d thought. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The will to fight, to survive, was too strong. After everything she’d been through, after everything she’d fought for, and after all the people she’d killed to keep her friends alive, she couldn’t throw it all away out of weakness. Clarke knew that she deserved this hell—and she would take it, bear it, with all the strength that she could muster, because it was her just punishment. If she took the easy way out now, she would never be free. The guilt would find a way to haunt her somehow, like it had been haunting her for so long. But if she could make it through the fire…if she could find a way to survive this…something deep down told her that it would be like a clean start. She would have suffered the retribution of all those she had hurt and killed—all those faces in the woods—and the score would be even.

But something had gone wrong when she tried to bleed the fire out; her body had started going numb, and she couldn’t grip the sharp thing and she couldn’t stop shaking and she couldn’t feel her hands…the worst part was that even though her body became unresponsive and slow, she could still feel the fire coursing through her with every beat of her heart. So she kept scratching, trying endlessly to get it out, even though her brain had started to become unresponsive and slow, too…

Then her body had become responsive again. Her mind resharpened. The fire made her limbs writhe uncontrollably, and there was something heavy pressing them down. For a brief moment her eyes had been able to focus, and she’d seen figures…they were blurry at first, and they were making sounds that seemed so far away…then she’d seen them. Bellamy’s eyes. He was staring straight at her. Only this time, they weren’t full of cold hatred like they’d been in the woods; they were afraid. Clarke recognized that look. He’d given it to her before, any time she was about to do something rash. Only she’d never realized it was fear before…fear mixed with concern and longing…Clarke felt a wave of relief wash over her and a prickle of something like happiness in her chest. Bellamy had forgiven her! He’d left her to die in the woods before, as she was being dragged away in chains surrounded by the rotting faces, with nothing but bitter malice in his eyes. But now he was here, with that look on his face, and she knew without a doubt that he was trying to save her. _I was right! It’s true!_ she thought as Bellamy’s face drifted back into obscurity and her mind clouded over. _If I survive, I will be…free_ … _I must_ …

▪▪▪

Bellamy tried to blink through the exhaustion that was weighing heavily on his eyes. They were now into the third day of Clarke’s fever—stage three of the _fayawamplei_ —and she had to be almost constantly restrained. Her delirium caused her to thrash, and once she’d broken out of Osprey’s grip and attempted to pull herself into the fire that sat next to her in the metal oven. Fortunately she had only sustained a small burn on her hand, but the incident left Bellamy constantly on edge and unable to sleep when it was Osprey’s turn to hold her. He also knew that if he didn’t sleep, his own exhaustion would make it easier for her to break free from his grip as well, which only served to make sleeping harder.

It was also extremely difficult to keep the bandages on her arm and leg, and even more difficult to keep the wounds closed. On day two they’d noticed that the gash on her leg had gotten infected, and Osprey had almost cried with relief when Bellamy told her that the reason he’d come looking for them was to bring them a vial of antibiotic from Mt. Weather. They’d attempted to inject it into Clarke’s leg, but Bellamy couldn’t hold it still enough for Osprey to get the needle in without risking it breaking, and he also couldn’t restrain her arms at the same time—leaving her free to claw and punch at everything around her. They’d tried tying her up using some clothes ( _there was a_ serious _lack of rope in this treehouse_ , Bellamy had said bitterly), but she always pulled free. That left them with only one option—sedating her.

It turned out that sedation wouldn’t be so easy, however. Neither of them was willing to hit her over the head with something, and the treehouse’s medical stock had no morphine or sleeping pills to speak of.

“I’m not even sure those things would work on her,” Osprey had said as she and Bellamy sat discussing it hours before. “Her fever is burning everything up so quickly.”

“So what do we do?”

“There is a potent herb we could use,” Osprey had said, furrowing her brow. “I’ve never seen it fail to put someone out.”

“Great. How do we get it?”

“That’s the hard part. It doesn’t grow in winter, and I have no stock of it here. The _Trigedakru_ will have some though.”

Bellamy had sworn sharply under his breath.

“The _Trigedakru_ will know that I helped you, back at the mountain. They won’t trade with me anymore,” she’d said with a determined look in her eye, her gaze transfixed on Clarke’s flushed face. “I will have to steal it from them.”

Bellamy had noticed that she hadn’t looked away from Clarke’s face the whole time, and a prickling feeling had risen in his chest that had deepened his already weary frown. But he pushed it aside—saving Clarke was more important.

“Do what you have to do,” he’d said hoarsely. “Take my gun.”

 

And so Bellamy was left sitting alone with Clarke by the fire, exhaustion beginning to overtake him. He’d propped Clarke up so that she was sitting against his chest, which made it easier for him to pin her arms down by wrapping his own around her. She was getting exhausted from fever and infection as well, and could only pull herself feebly against his grip. He tried not to look at her infected leg, which was beginning to turn unnatural colors. To keep himself awake, he went back over the conversation he’d had with Osprey in his head. For some reason, his thoughts kept coming back to the way she’d looked at Clarke when she’d decided to risk her own capture and death by the Grounders in order to get this herb. The sharp prickling feeling returned to his chest. _Is there something between Osprey and Clarke?_ he thought suddenly. _After all, she’d saved Clarke and taught her so many things…and Clarke never had to kill anyone to protect her,_ he thought both bitterly and sadly. He would understand if Clarke did have feelings for her. Osprey was exactly what she needed—someone from the Ark who understood her in the way a Grounder couldn’t, but also someone that didn’t have nightmares of murder and regret associated with her. Osprey could take care of herself, and Clarke didn’t feel responsible for her. She could be free to simply _be_ with her. Bellamy’s heart sank at the understanding of all the things Osprey could be for her that he could not. Clarke let out a brief moan and turned her head away from the fire, prompting Bellamy to absentmindedly lift one hand to smooth down her limp, damp hair. _And they’ve lived out here, alone together, for three months_ …his thoughts continued, but then an image had come to Bellamy’s mind that sent his heart leaping inside his chest. He imagined himself out here with Clarke instead, the two of them living together in this cozy treehouse, on a honeymoon of sorts. They could be sitting on a pile of furs by the oven fire, just like this, except Clarke would be healthy and happy and laughing at a kiss he’d just planted on her cheek, and they’d both be naked and flushed having just—

Bellamy’s breath caught in his throat and his chest burned with a sudden longing. It’s not as if he hadn’t noticed from day one on the ground that she was gorgeous. And it’s not as if it was the first time he’d imagined having her that way—even in those early days, when she’d been such a pain in the neck and they were constantly arguing, all it did was make him want to thrust her up against something even more and pump in and out of her until she was breathlessly crying out his name. He’d even been a bit jealous when Finn had managed to break through Clarke’s defenses, and if he was being honest, that jealousy was a big part of why he’d agreed to have sex with Raven. But this fantasy was different; he wasn’t imagining fucking her senseless. He was imagining something so much more… _intimate_. His heart burned again, and somehow it felt like there was a whole ocean of something inside of it that he was just now discovering. But rather than allowing himself to get lost in that ocean, he only sighed in frustration and shook his head to clear away the daydreams that could never be. His eyelids drooped, and he rested his chin on Clarke’s shoulder, just for a moment…

 

Bellamy awoke with a start many hours later. He knew immediately that he had slept a long time because night had fallen outside and the oven fire was reduced to faintly glowing coals, leaving the treehouse kitchen nearly pitch black and noticeably colder. Then he noticed that as he slept, his arms had grown slack around Clarke, but she was no longer struggling against them—not even weakly. She was instead lying completely limp against his chest.

“Clarke?!” he cried, shaking her firmly, his heart suddenly thumping in his chest.

She did not respond or stir, but Bellamy found her forehead to still be burning and sweating with fever when he placed his hand over it. He let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. He carefully removed himself from behind her and gently laid her down on the furs. He then grabbed some wood and the flint and began restoking the fire. Osprey had shown him where she kept some homemade candle lamps, and he retrieved a few and lit them once the fire was burning again.

With the room once more full of light, Bellamy realized that Clarke’s face had become pale and yellowish. Her lips were almost drained of color, and there were dark circles around her eyes. She hadn’t looked like this earlier. She was also completely still, except for the shallow (and barely noticeable) rise and fall of her chest as she breathed slowly. His heart began to hammer in his chest again. He carefully lifted the bandage covering her infected leg, and almost vomited.

The wound had swollen massively and was bright red, and a yellowish-green pus that smelled like death was oozing from it. Bellamy closed his eyes for a moment, swallowed hard, and got up to retrieve a cloth to tie around his nose and mouth. It didn’t completely block out the smell, but it made it bearable. He pulled the bowl of alcohol they’d been using to try and keep the infection under control with towards him and used a clean cloth to carefully dab away the pus with it. Him touching the inflamed wound, combined with the burn of the alcohol, made Clarke jerk and mumble; Bellamy was sure it was extremely painful. Suddenly, he realized that Clarke no longer writhing around meant that he could inject the antibiotic properly. He quickly retrieved it from the cabinet where they’d been keeping it, and cleaned the needle by dipping it in the bowl of alcohol. He slowly injected it where Osprey had attempted to before, into a vein just above the wound. The entire time he kept thinking about how Clarke would know just what to do, if their positions were reversed. He recalled the concentrated determination that took over her whenever she had a patient that needed her. She had brought Jasper back from the brink with that determination, when everyone else had given up on him. In that moment, Bellamy desperately wished he could be like her.

_What would Clarke do now?_ he asked himself. _She would keep working. She would take every step possible._ He grabbed the cloth again and, dipping it back in the alcohol, resumed dabbing the wound. He wrung some of the alcohol out of the cloth into the wound as well, trying to cover as much of it as he could. There Bellamy sat for a long time, how long exactly he didn’t even know or care, tending to Clarke’s leg. It didn’t matter that he was exhausted and hungry, it didn’t matter that a constant hum of paranoid thoughts ran through the back of his mind. He didn’t even notice when the pus stopped flowing and the swelling went down a bit, or the slight lightening in the color of the sky outside the windows.

The only thing that broke him out of his trance was a thump of something landing on the porch outside the front door. He snapped his head up to look at the door (noticing the painful soreness in his neck from looking down at Clarke’s wound for so long), and grabbed a spear that Osprey had left in the kitchen when she took Bellamy’s gun. He sat by Clarke, crouching protectively over her with the spear at the ready, as the lock lifted and the door blew open with the chill. Osprey came bustling inside, sending relief through Bellamy and causing him to lower the weapon. 

“She’s not moving anymore,” Osprey noted with worry in her voice as she removed her outer fur jacket and another thinner one underneath.

“She hasn’t been for a while. She still has a fever though, and her leg was looking pretty bad,” Bellamy responded, looking back at Clarke. He noticed for the first time that her fever had gone down a bit and some color was returning to her face.

Osprey crossed the room and knelt down on the other side of Clarke, checking her forehead and then the wound on her leg.

“I injected the antibiotic. And I’ve been cleaning it constantly with the alcohol for…a while,” Bellamy continued.

“It’s a very good thing you did. It looks like the infection got pretty bad while I was gone. And it’s also a good thing you kept putting the alcohol on it—at this stage of infection, the antibiotic alone might not have been enough,” Osprey said, catching Bellamy’s eye. “I was afraid we were going to have to cut it off.”

Bellamy clenched his jaw. He honestly didn’t think he would have been able to bear that. Not if it was Clarke.

“But why is she so still?” he asked, eager to change the subject. “She still has a fever.”

“This fever is from the infection, not the _fayawamplei_.”

“So it’s over? The fungus is gone?”

“Yes,” Osprey said, sighing with relief and smiling slightly. “She survived it.”

Bellamy nodded and relaxed, sitting back down from the protective crouch he had still been in.

“It also looks like the infection is retreating. She’s going to make it, Bellamy,” Osprey said, giving him an all-too-knowing smile. “But we do need to get some fluids in her. No chance you brought an IV drip in that backpack too, is there?”

Bellamy shook his head, clenching his jaw again.

“Don’t worry,” Osprey said quickly. “We can feed her some water and broth.”

She poured some water that they’d boiled the day before into a small cup and gave it to Bellamy to give to Clarke. As he gently lifted her head up and poured it into her mouth, Osprey began boiling more water in a metal pan over the oven fire. She dropped a few pieces of jerky inside and created a meat broth that she also gave to Bellamy to feed Clarke.

After a few sips of the warm broth, Clarke’s eyes began to slowly flutter open.

“B-Bellamy?” she said quietly.

“I’m here, Clarke,” he said with a wide smile he couldn’t have hidden even if he’d wanted to. “You’re going to be okay. Just rest,” he added, trying to sound as reassuring as possible. For the first time in days, her pupils had returned to their normal size, and Bellamy could see the bright blue of her irises again.

She gave a small nod and drank some more broth before quickly falling back asleep. Bellamy felt Osprey’s stare on the back of his neck as he sat watching Clarke’s breathing become slow and even.

“So did you get the herb from the Grounders?” he asked to break the silence. “I guess we don’t need it anymore, but I still want to know what happened.”

“Later. You need to sleep. You look like shit. Smell like it too.”

“You’re no rose bud yourself, _Oz_ ,” he retorted, using Clarke’s nickname for her.

He didn’t protest, however, and stretched his stiff limbs as he went into the bedroom, looking forward to flopping down heavily on the spare bedroll he and Osprey had been taking turns to sleep in over the past three days. Outside the window of the bedroom, the sunrise caught his eye. The beams of morning light were shining in through the icy trees and reflecting on the glistening snow, and Bellamy was suddenly struck by how _beautiful_ the winter was. They had only ever seen pictures of it on the Ark, but the pictures couldn’t convey how much it all sparkled, or how the normally chattering forest became peacefully quiet. He couldn’t wait to see Clarke’s expression when she saw it for the first time.

Bellamy settled down into the fur bedroll feeling strangely light, as if a heavy weight had been lifted away. The sparkling sunrise streaming in through the window didn’t bother him at all as he drifted off into the best sleep he’d had in three months.


End file.
